Given the history of layoffs, I am afraid that one day soon we’ll be reading about Fuchsia being dropped. It was always ambitious but it’s not the kind of project modern Google seems capable of committing to.
Money in the bank doesn't care if it comes from stuff 'normal' people is aware of, or something else.
Just like despite all issues, many here won't be aware Bell Labs and UNIX legacy now belong to Nokia.
Or how many Linux projects depend on Oracle and Microsoft money, as per contributors on their salaries.
In the case of research and semiconductor technology, typically IBM isn't out to deliver a finished product, they work with other companies who bring the end result to market. E.g., there's a joint venture between Intel and IBM to advance Intel's fabrication capabilities.
When you think of IBM as more of an R&D consulting company or custom enterprise application company it starts to make more sense. To some extent they also have an off-the-shelf product lineup, but most of the reasons to choose them involve custom solutions.
Example of a $700 million contract with Disney: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2555832/ibm-signs--730...
That looks like a fairly straight forward outsourcing / "consulting" contract rather than anything to do with R&D.
Their R&D is basically structured like a consulting gig in itself. They help people like Nvidia and Intel deliver on their products.
There are some extremely popular tech stacks like Docker and Hashicorp led by companies that are struggling to be profitable. The whole reason those technologies are popular is because they are free or cheap. Then as soon as the company starts to tighten the screws and monetize their user base, the user base crumbles.
IBM’s Disney contract is about double the size of Hashicorp’s annual revenue.
Most "Quantum Ambassadors" and similar are funded thanks to benevolence/nepotism of local management since they do not create billable hours or maintenance contracts. Adding to that, IBM's rolling out suffocating utilization targets for their employees in more and more countries which will take care of that as well.
It's a dying company.
In the 1970’s IBM was a behemoth. Yet IBM of that time was unable to translate that success meaningfully to personal PCs. In the realm of the personal PC it was Intel and Microsoft that dominated.
Similarly the Microsoft of the 2000’s was a behemoth that failed to translate that success to mobile computing.
I believe the other poster was trying to say that Google of today is like IBM of the 70’s or Microsoft of the 2000’s.
That being said IBM is different today than it was even a couple decades ago and Microsoft has changed a lot in recent years so maybe Google could become innovative again.